Its been a while since I finished a book. Well, a novel anyway. I have been busy with textbooks about Gothic Architecture and 'what the hell Othello is really about' (really?). I have been catching up on The Tudors and The Wire as well as reading about Chocolates and Confections. (I made the most luscious spice tea truffles the other day.)
But this is a story about a book. A Louise Erdrich book. One I have been reading for a year now. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. I believe that reading this book the way I did was not necessarily the best way to read it. It is soft and sweet but has enough guts to anchor one's attention for a long reading event. I loved it and I so wish that I had been sitting in a log cabin in the mountains with a pine-wood fire burning in the fireplace for a few days with nothing else to do but read this book. My path was one of unfortunate interruptions that had nothing to do with not being fully and utterly entertained by the story, the characters and the happiness this book brought me.
It is the story of a strong white woman, one who does not really know her own strength until she is put into a position of ultimate weakness and comes out triumphant. And the story of an unorthodox catholic priest who finds himself in the confidences of a people that he can not hope to understand or minister to. The action switches between 1910 and the late 1990s as the story of Agnes and Father Damien intertwine in unforeseen ways. The Ojibwe people are the other main characters in this story of faith and disbelief, love and hate, truth and lies and the blurring of them all into one extraordinary life.
Louise Erdrich is a prose poet. She can set up a conversation between characters about exactly what you want to know and yet surprise you with every turn. I often wanted to tell someone what someone else had said or was doing, and just as quickly I understood why it was imperative that they not know any of it. The confessional is a lonely place to live. I have a friend who is a small town psychologist who has all but given up a societal life - he no long goes out to functions, parties, etc. for fear of one of his patients wanting to either have a session right there or run away with fear that someone in the room knows their deepest darkests. It is no wonder that priests live a secluded life, well, when and where this book is set anyway. And then throw in the fact that the Ojibwe people have a whole other set of rules about right and wrong and the scene is set.
Secrets are abound in this book and we are privileged to every single one of them. It is delicious, sad, sweet and alluring. "I have never seen the truth without crossing my eyes. Life is crazy." says Father Damien as he tells a story in 1996 to Father Jude at the investigation for the beatitude of one of Father Damien's Nuns.
But the real treat for me was the look into the ways of the Ojibwe - the customs, lifestyles, loves and horrors. I came to love the old ones of the settlement and loved the way they lived and loved. "It was a young love set blazing in bodies aged and over-used, and sometimes it cracked them like too much fire in an old tin stove."
One of my favorite passages - "Some people, they go so deep. They are like a being made of tunnels. Passageways that twist and double back and disappear. You have a foot on one path and you follow for a while, but then there is a sinkhole, bad footing, a wall." Who hasn't felt like this some times in their own lives or met people who were. There are plenty of characters in this book that this line describes perfectly and it was my pleasure to meet them all.
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